By Rod Benson
In remarks circulated on video in September 2026, Likud member of the Knesset Hanoch Milwidsky reportedly declared: “We are not like everyone else,” adding that laws applying to others do not apply to the Jewish people. According to the published English translation, he also described the Jewish people as possessing an elevated status and a duty to establish “a land of miracles and virtue.”
The awkward translation warrants caution, as does the absence of a complete independently verified English transcript. Yet the apparent argument is clear: the distinctive vocation of the Jewish people confers an exceptional status that releases Israel from constraints applying to other nations. Such a proposition is indefensible in international law, incompatible with Christian theology and contradicted by central themes of the Hebrew Scriptures. (Middle East Monitor)
No nation is above the law
Modern international human rights law rests on the equal dignity of every human being. Article 1 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights affirms that all people are born free and equal in dignity and rights. The International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights requires states to respect the rights of persons within their territory or jurisdiction without discrimination, while Article 26 declares all persons equal before the law and entitled to equal protection. These principles do not erase religious, cultural or national distinctiveness. They establish that distinctive identity cannot become a licence to deny others the rights one claims for oneself. (United Nations; OHCHR)
Israel has the same rights as other states, including protection of its population against attack and recognition of its people’s right to security and political self-determination. These rights are accompanied by legal obligations. No history of persecution, theological self-understanding or claim to providential election creates immunity from international humanitarian or human rights law. Security may justify proportionate measures directed towards legitimate ends; it cannot provide blanket permission for collective punishment, indiscriminate violence, forced displacement or permanent domination. International law is needed precisely because states cannot be the final judges of the justice of their own conduct.
In its advisory opinion of 19 July 2024, the International Court of Justice concluded that Israel’s continued presence in the occupied Palestinian territory is unlawful. It also found that Israeli legislation and measures maintained a “near-complete separation” between settler and Palestinian communities in the West Bank and East Jerusalem and breached Article 3 of the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination.
Because Article 3 prohibits both racial segregation and apartheid, the Court’s wording did not resolve whether it was classifying the measures as segregation, apartheid or both. The finding of a breach was nevertheless unequivocal. Milwidsky’s apparent reasoning reverses this legal and moral framework by making collective identity a source of unequal entitlement. (ICJ advisory opinion)
A dangerous historical grammar
Claims of national superiority are not unique to any one people. Adolf Hitler and the National Socialists explicitly asserted the superiority of the so-called Aryan or Nordic race, within which they located the authentic German Volk. Nazi ideology interpreted history as a racial struggle in which superior peoples were entitled to dominate those classified as inferior. It presented Germans as possessing a distinctive destiny, invoked Providence to legitimise Hitler’s mission, and claimed territory in Eastern Europe as necessary Lebensraum. These ideas were translated into discriminatory laws, aggressive warfare, racial colonisation and genocide. (United States Holocaust Memorial Museum)
There is a limited but important structural similarity between this ideology and Milwidsky’s reported reasoning. Both employ a supremacist grammar: our people possess an elevated status; our historical mission differs from that of others; consequently, ordinary moral or legal restraints cannot be applied to us in the same way. In each case, collective identity risks becoming a source of unequal entitlement, while the security and aspirations of the favoured group are assigned greater moral weight than the lives and rights of outsiders.
The comparison must not be abused. Milwidsky is not thereby proved to be a Nazi; contemporary Israel is not identical to Nazi Germany; and Israeli actions cannot simply be equated with the Holocaust. A politician’s statement does not establish the comprehensive ideology of a state or people. Nazi doctrine was explicitly pseudo-biological, classified Jews as an inferior and dangerous race, stripped them of citizenship and culminated in their systematic extermination. Jewish people were the principal victims of this racial antisemitism. Any comparison that transfers responsibility from particular political actors to Jewish people collectively would itself reproduce an antisemitic logic.
The valid historical lesson is narrower. The history of Nazism demonstrates what can happen when claims of collective superiority weaken universal moral constraints, divide human beings into classes of unequal worth and place a national mission beyond external judgement. That warning applies universally—to Germans, Israelis, Palestinians, Christians, Muslims and every other national or religious community. The relevant comparison concerns a recurring political and theological grammar, not an equivalence between identities, governments or crimes.
Biblical Israel and the modern state
A careful theological critique must distinguish between biblical Israel, the Jewish people and the modern State of Israel. These realities are historically and theologically related, but they are not interchangeable. A secular state established in 1948 cannot simply appropriate every promise addressed to ancient Israel while disregarding the covenantal obligations accompanying those promises. Nor should the conduct of an Israeli government or politician be attributed to Jewish people collectively. Jewish religious and ethical traditions contain powerful resources for universal justice, argument, repentance and criticism of abusive power.
The Hebrew Scriptures provide no warrant for national exemption from moral accountability. Israel’s election is central to the biblical narrative, but election is fundamentally a vocation. Abraham is called so that all the families of the earth may be blessed through him (Genesis 12:1–3). At Sinai, Israel is summoned to become a priestly kingdom and holy nation (Exodus 19:5–6). Priestly identity signifies service and responsibility, not superiority. Israel is chosen for the sake of God’s purposes in the world, not released from the moral order governing human relationships.
Biblical election actually intensifies accountability. Amos declares: “You only have I known of all the families of the earth; therefore I will punish you for all your iniquities” (Amos 3:2). The “therefore” is decisive. Intimacy with God increases rather than diminishes responsibility. Israel’s prophets refuse to allow covenant identity, worship or possession of the land to conceal injustice. Isaiah condemns worship separated from care for the oppressed; Jeremiah warns against treating the temple as a guarantee of security; and Micah declares that God requires justice, covenantal faithfulness and humility. These prophetic voices model a tradition of internal moral criticism, not hostility towards Israel.
The Torah likewise opposes partiality. God “is not partial and takes no bribe,” executes justice for the orphan and widow, and loves the stranger; Israel must likewise love the stranger because it was once a stranger in Egypt (Deuteronomy 10:17–19). Leviticus commands that the resident foreigner be treated as a citizen and loved as oneself (Leviticus 19:33–34). Numbers 15:15–16 prescribes one statute for the community and the resident alien. These ancient laws cannot be transferred mechanically into modern jurisprudence, but their theological direction is unmistakable: covenantal distinctiveness cannot legitimately be converted into ethnic supremacy or unequal justice.
The prophets further undermine narrow national exceptionalism by affirming God’s sovereignty over other peoples. Amos compares Israel’s exodus with divine acts involving the Philistines and Arameans (Amos 9:7). Jonah exposes the resentment of a prophet who wants divine compassion confined within Israel’s boundaries. The Hebrew Scriptures preserve Israel’s particular covenant while subjecting Israel, along with every nation, to universal divine justice.
The Christian rejection of supremacy
Christian theology receives Israel’s Scriptures and must approach Jewish election with humility. Centuries of Christian antisemitism, forced conversion, persecution and complicity in violence make such humility indispensable. Criticism of Milwidsky, the Israeli government or religious nationalism must never become an indictment of Judaism or Jewish people. Christians should recognise Jewish thinkers, activists and religious leaders who oppose supremacism from within their own traditions.
Christian faith nevertheless cannot accept a theology placing any nation beyond judgement. Jesus joins love of God to love of neighbour and extends neighbour-love across communal boundaries in the parable of the Good Samaritan. He blesses peacemakers, identifies himself with the hungry, displaced and imprisoned, and commands his disciples to reject domination. The New Testament affirms that God shows no partiality (Acts 10:34; Romans 2:11). Paul’s declaration that there is neither Jew nor Greek in Christ does not abolish cultural identity, but it excludes claims of spiritual hierarchy within the reconciled community (Galatians 3:28).
The cross supplies Christianity’s decisive criticism of sacred power. God’s reign is disclosed not through immunity, domination or national triumph, but through self-giving love, solidarity with victims and reconciliation between enemies. Christians therefore cannot sanctify any state’s violence or treat political sovereignty as the instrument of an exclusive divine entitlement.
Election means responsibility
A “land of miracles and virtue” cannot be created by declaring its people exempt from laws governing others. Virtue requires justice, restraint, truthfulness and equal regard for human life. The historic persecution of Jewish people, culminating in the Shoah, gives compelling urgency to Jewish safety and self-determination. It cannot diminish the humanity or rights of Palestinians. Trauma deserves recognition and protection, but it cannot confer permanent moral immunity.
The proper theological conclusion is the reverse of Milwidsky’s apparent argument. If a people understands itself as entrusted with a distinctive calling, that calling entails deeper responsibility, not fewer constraints. The test of election is not privilege but faithfulness; not supremacy but service; not exemption from judgement but responsiveness to it. International human rights law, Christian theology, the Hebrew prophetic tradition and the warning of modern history converge at this point: no people is expendable, no state is infallible, and no nation stands above justice.
Rev Dr Rod Benson is General Secretary of the NSW Ecumenical Council and a minister of the Uniting Church in Australia serving at North Rocks Community Church in Sydney.
Image source: Middle East Monitor [Screengrab/X@academic_la]
All Told 